A HOUSING trust with Plaid Cymru presidential candidate Dafydd Iwan on its board has been reported to the Commission for Racial Equality for allegedly discriminating against non-Welsh speakers.

The Second Portmeirion Foundation, which owns 54 properties around the village of Llanfrothen in Gwynedd, gives a higher priority when allocating its houses to Welsh speakers not from the area than to locals who cannot speak the language.

Howard Jones, from Tynygongl, Anglesey, has made a formal complaint about the policy which is now being investigated by the CRE's legal department.

He has also asked the Charity Commission to look into the matter.

Last week Dafydd Iwan, pictured, came in for heavy criticism after suggesting during a speech at the National Eisteddfod that some racists were moving into Wales to get away from Indians and Pakistanis in England.

In a letter in yesterday's Western Mail, Mr Iwan said the main theme of his eisteddfod speech was the need to help local people faced with spiralling house prices stay in their communities.

But Mr Jones, who obtained a copy of the housing trust's allocation policy from its Shropshire-based land agents, accused the Plaid vice-president of being hypocritical over the issue.

"The trust that he sits on states quite clearly that it gives higher priority to Welsh-speakers than to locals who cannot speak Welsh.

"That demonstrates that his primary interest is the language and not the localness of the applicants.

"I am not opposed to the Welsh language at all. I would even have considered it reasonable if new tenants were expected to take Welsh lessons, but the policy is much more rigid than that and discriminates against people who do not currently speak Welsh."

The Second Portmeirion Foundation owns homes that once formed part of the Portmeirion estate developed by the architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, who died in 1984.

Top priority under the allocation policy goes to applicants who are local and Welsh-speaking. The subsequent order of priorities is: local connection and Welsh speaking, Welsh speaking but without local connections, local but non-Welsh speaking.

Mr Iwan, himself a qualified architect, said, "The policy was already in place a couple of years ago when I was invited to join the trustees, but I entirely agree with it.

"It is a Welsh-speaking area and the policy of the trustees, some of whom are not Welsh-speaking, is to help protect the language. Having said that, some of the tenants are non-Welsh speaking.

"Taking steps to protect the language is not racist, because learning a language is possible for anyone."

A spokeswoman for the Commission for Racial Equality said, "We do not comment on complaints that are the subject of ongoing investigation."